Singapore has taken a significant step towards transforming its economy with the release of a consultative paper titled “Skills-First: Are We There Yet?” The paper, launched on 20 May 2025, calls for a coordinated, multi-stakeholder approach to foster a skills-powered economy. This initiative, led by the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL), aims to address the structural barriers hindering the adoption of skills-first practices.
The paper identifies five key barriers: signalling failures, coordination deficits, risk asymmetry, measurement gaps, and cultural resistance. These challenges have kept workforce systems entrenched in qualification-first thinking, leaving 100 million workers globally underemployed due to skills mismatches, as reported by the World Economic Forum in 2024.
Highlighting successful global interventions, the paper points to Sweden’s Job Security Councils and New Zealand’s micro-credentials system as models for addressing these inefficiencies. It also notes PwC’s skills-first workforce strategy, which improved internal mobility and reduced hiring time by 45%.
Since the SkillsFuture Movement’s inception in 2015, Singapore has made strides in updating higher learning mandates and engaging employers to drive skills-first practices. Initiatives include national jobs-skills taxonomies and digital tools to enhance skills signalling.
The paper emphasises that realising a skills-first ecosystem requires rethinking how skills are valued and applied across the system. It calls for stakeholders to engage in a national conversation, facilitated by IAL-led roundtables, to shape Singapore’s future as a skills-powered economy.
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